Foreign experts now in outlying Penghu for crash investigation

TAIPEI--Foreign experts arrived in the outlying county of Penghu on Saturday to help clarify the cause of the deadly crash of a TransAsia Airways flight earlier in the week, according to Taiwan's Aviation Safety Council.

The investigation team comprised council managing director Wang Hsing-chung and officials from the Bureau d'Enquetes et d'Analyses pour la securite de l'aviation civile, the French authority responsible for investigations into civil aviation accidents.

Other members include representatives from Avions de Transport Regional, the French-Italian manufacturer of the ATR-72 that crashed and its engine provider Pratt & Whitney Canada.

The Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation specifies that both the designer and manufacturer of a crashed plane should be involved in the investigation.

In addition to the investigative team, two other French experts are currently in Taiwan proper to help gather information from the fallen aircraft's black boxes.

Findings from the black boxes are expected to be released on July 29 or July 30, while an initial analysis of the crash might be available in one month, the council said.

A full report on the causes of the crash, however, will take one year to complete, it said.

TransAsia Flight GE222, which took off from Kaohsiung on Wednesday evening, crashed in Penghu after aborting a landing in unstable weather and trying to fly a go-around, leaving 48 of the 58 people on board dead.

According to the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA), as of Saturday afternoon, the bodies of 44 of those who perished in the crash have been identified.

Foreign experts take a look of the site of the TransAsia Airways Flight GE222 crash from a rooftop in Penghu, yesterday. Experts from Canada, France, Italy and the U.S. arrived in the outlying county of Penghu on Saturday to help clarify the cause of the deadly crash of a TransAsia Airways flight earlier in the week, according to Taiwan's Aviation Safety Council.